I think testing got the wrong kernel

michapma · 12-16-2005, 02:30 PM

hi all,

I installed Etch testing from beta1 this past weekend, and this evening I took the time to write its entries on my Sarge installation's /boot/grub/menu.lst. To double-check the info I temporarily mounted testing's /boot and then /. In so doing I noticed something funny: "initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-1-386". After successfully booting into Etch, I verified the funny thing about it:

Code:

$ cat cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 2
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
stepping        : 7
cpu MHz         : 2411.552
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid
bogomips        : 4784.12

Why would testing install a 386 kernel when I should be running a 686?

More importantly, the kernel is not optimized for my hardware. But how bad is that likely to be? Is it worth resinstalling the kernel with a new package? I don't believe I've ever even done that 100% successfully.

thx

dinolinux · 12-16-2005, 02:45 PM

It's nothing wrong about it. Sometimes you will get i386 kernels when running on higher architectures. That kernel is not optimized, but you can live fine with it. If you want you can apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.12-1-686 or something if you don't like the i386.

michapma · 12-17-2005, 02:18 PM

Thanks for the answer.

I'm living fine with it, that's true. I'm just wondering what kind of optimizations I'm missing out on, and what they would bring...

dastrike · 12-17-2005, 02:48 PM

Well, install a -686 kernel then, nothing stopping you...

Code:

apt-get install linux-image-686